ACCURACY OF AIRBORNE IFSAR MAPPING

Airborne IFSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) mapping is attracting much attention in the geo-spatial community. This attention is due to the flexibility of system deployment, near weather-independent operation, cloud penetrating capability, versatile map products, and quick turn-around time. As a result, high-resolution airborne IFSAR systems are providing data to applications traditionally supported by conventional photogrammetric technology. The three main products are, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), digital Orthorectified Radar Images (ORRIs), and Topographic Line Maps (TLMs). These products are being produced at Intermap by the STAR-3i airborne IFSAR system to support many geo-spatial related applications. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the accuracy performance of airborne IFSAR systems, with a focus on Intermap’s STAR-3i.